The DATAVIEW Statistical Information System is an integrated software package that permits the management, display and detailed analysis of time-related data. The package provides comprehensive time series data base maintenance facilities, a variety of statistical analysis facilities, automatic frequency conversion, high quality screen and hard-copy graphics displays, and powerful report generation capabilities, including direct links to spreadsheet and desktop publishing or advanced word processing packages. Both analytical and presentation quality graphs can be produced easily.

Among its statistical analysis options, DATAVIEW supports multivariate regression, seasonal adjustment, and correlation analyses, thus allowing the relationship between variables to be examined in depth; the regression options include the capability to specify a wide range of functional forms and use embedded transformations.

The package supports both interactive and macro processing, thus permitting both immediate and periodic follow-up analyses. Production routines can be organized to generate virtually all types of output, including tabular reports, graphs, and repetitive analyses that incorporate new data as they become available.

DATAVIEW can be licensed as a single system or in quantity. All prices include one year's updates, improvements, and unlimited telephone/Email support. On-site training can be provided and an optional annually renewable AlphaPlus support agreement is available that provides support, updates, and improvements in the second and subsequent years.

The program runs on standard IBM-compatible microcomputers, including notebooks and sub-notebooks. Compatible with Windows 3.x, Windows 9.x, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. Legacy support for MS/PC/DR DOS is also available. As relevant, requires numeric coprocessor and less than 3 megabytes of hard disk space. Network versions available for Novell and other standard network operating systems. Conformable versions are also available for mainframe and other platforms.

DATAVIEW offers scalable time series data base maintenance facilities equal to the demands of any likely task. To provide flexibility and security, it permits the creation and maintenance of both permanent data banks and temporary workspace (Memory) files. Each data bank can contain as many as 10,000 time series, each with a maximum of 1600 observations; as many as 15 such data banks can be accessed simultaneously. Memory Files can store up to 500 series with the same characteristics. In addition, powerful import and export facilities are available to permit the transfer of data between DATAVIEW and other environments, including both government sources, vendors who supply data bases in its native data bank format, and the multiplicity of Internet websites.

Internally, DATAVIEW provides an extensive set of data management functions, operators and features, including Census X-11 quarterly and monthly seasonal adjustment, as well as a wide range of mathematical, statistical, relational, and logical operators; optionally MODLER also supports weekly seasonal adjustment. The platform has the further capability to generate easily such analytic aids as pseudo random variates, correlation matrices and several types of growth triangles. The standard data observation frequencies include weekly, bi-weekly, ten day, lunar, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual, and various fiscal and agricultural year frequencies. Under user control, automatic frequency conversion is fully supported.

DATAVIEW offers a number of access aids. Data Banks and Memory Files are all component-level documented. Moreover, this documentation, which includes that for individual series, can be displayed whole or in part in order to assist in the identification and retrieval of these series. In addition, both series names and documentation can be keyword searched to find particular items. Index and Find buttons appear on dialogue boxes whenever such information is likely to be helpful. As appropriate, a Macro button also appears to allow macro file segments to be included in current commands, thus obviating needless re-keying, not to mention context specific help.

Presentation quality data display features include line graphs, bar charts, dated points, mixed line-bar, and stacked bar charts. Each may be specified as plots of one or more series or expressions against time, or as plots of series or expressions against some other series. Log and semi-log scale plots are supported as well as plots with dual y-axis scales, grid lines and other features. Full screen editing of screen graphics displays is also supported, allowing labels, notes and comments to be placed anywhere. In addition, displays may be saved, generally to the Clipboard, but also JPG, GIF and other such files in order to integrate both text and graphics into reports or support the generation of Web pages. It is additionally possible to autogenerate template macros that permit graphs to be reproduced later using the same or an updated data set.

Within MODLER, the report generation facilities permit the creation of various types of tables, including both mixed frequency and those with embedded formulas for row and column oriented transformations. These features may be combined. Tables may include titles, subtitles (left justified, right justified, or centered), and blank lines. Tables and portions of tables may be set off with ruling lines. In general, the tables produced are time-labelled, with dates usually displayed horizontally, although transposed tables can also be produced. Such tables may show successive observations or selected observations for even widely separated dates.

A particular MODLER feature is the capability to directly address the cells of a standard spreadsheet, thus permitting time series observations to be copied to those cells or retrieved. Such observations may be converted on-the-fly from one observation frequency to another; it is also possible to embed transformations, so as to copy the results of those transformations to the spreadsheet cells. This facility permits the creation of tabular reports instantly that otherwise would require extensive spreadsheet macro programming. It may be operated interactively or templates (macros) may be created more or less as an automatic by-product and used repeatedly over time.

MODLER also produces specialty tables, such as solution comparison tables, displaying differences and percentage differences variable-by-variable for different model solutions. Other specialty tables display standard error statistics.

The regression methods currently supported include:

• Ordinary Least Squares
• Restricted Least Squares
• Ordinary Ridge Regression
• Weighted Least Squares
• Generalized Least Squares
• Two Stage Least Squares
• Polynomial Distributed Lags
• Autoregressive corrections
• Cochrane-Orcutt
• Hildreth-Lu
• Prais-Winsten
• Durbin

These options may be combined whenever the algorithmic operations involved are inherently compatible. Furthermore, commands may include embedded expressions that can even combine mathematical, logical, relational, and statistical operators and functions, both for dependent and regressor variables.

The usual range of supporting regression statistics and tests are provided, including the basic t-statistics, R2, and Durbin-Watson, plus a very wide range of other useful statistics such as the Log Likelihood function, Durbin h, Schwarz Criterion, Akaike Information Criterion, and tests such as unit root, structural stability and specification tests. MODLER also incorporates various estimation support facilities, including regressor term DROP and ADD commands, the capability to save residual and predicted sample period values, and provisions for making disk or hard copies of most displays; it is also possible to archive both commands and estimation results.

MODLER is evolutionary in its offerings but is not intended to be a specialty regression package; by design, its focus is on the standard methods commonly used for simultaneous equation models. However, its data link facilities encourage, permit and support the joint use of specialist packages such as MicroFit, TSP, and LimDep, thus offering its users the best of both worlds.

As indicated earlier, DATAVIEW is designed to be used with other software, both other members of its own software family and third party packages: data can be imported and exported using standard data interchange file formats, both fixed field and comma separated, including ASCII, Lotus 1-2-3, and TSD. It can also directly read from and write to spreadsheet cells.

DATAVIEW's DataClp technology additionally permits the capture of text based data from web pages, textfiles and other sources. This facility is extremely flexible in operation: the files can take the form of documents or those that are formatted as data tables. As indicated, they can be located on your machine or they may originate as Internet Web pages. The observations can be captured singly or as a chronological group.

As needed, DATAVIEW can also be network integrated into corporate data based systems that are based on standard DBMS technologies, although this generally requires specific customization.

Virtually all forms of DATAVIEW output can be incorporated into textual reports, spreadsheet tables, and other displays. Data can be directly copied cell-by-cell to spreadsheet files, and to the files of other relevant number-oriented packages. Provisions also exist to export directly to desktop publishing and advanced word processing packages; the packages specifically supported include Pagemaker, Ventura Publisher, Word, Word Pro, and Word Perfect. Custom versions of DATAVIEW are also available that support professional publishing systems.

Depending upon the specific application, DATAVIEW can be operated either using commands or the Windows interface by means of menus, icons, and dialog boxes. Using these Windows facilities, it is also possible to generate automatically macro commands that can be captured in order to perform repetitive periodic operations. In general, commands can be entered interactively or formed into macros that can be preserved from one session to the next. Users who have programming skills, or access to these, can also create programs using Visual Basic, Delphi, or even programming languages such as C/C++ or Fortran, that incorporate DATAVIEW capabilities.

DATAVIEW offers several types of online help facilities, both general and context specific. The standard help file offers multiple help levels, so as to provide the appropriate amount of help needed in each individual case; application specific help files can be organized in the same way. Users can produce hard copy using the incorporated Print command and can also annotate and otherwise personalize the help pages.